Ever since I heard about them, I wanted to bake them too. When I was in high school and commute to another town to go to school, I was often passing near a small shop where they sell muffins or cupcakes, and I used to buy from time to time with my friends and colleagues. It intrigues me how Americans decorate the cupcakes, pastels and strong colors, that are very alive and that can easily get your attention and open your appetite without you realizing it.

We had friends over the weekend and I thought I could bake something special for dessert so I just inaugurated my newest acquisition, my tray for muffins. The recipe is very simple and can be changed to please the consumers of all kinds, from vanilla and lemon to coffee, whiskey, or any other crazy combination.

This time I chose to do in 3 different flavors, but now I present you one of them, for the rest as I’ll keep for a later occasion.

Melt the butter and leave it to cool. Add in a bowl the above ingredients, how it comes easier for you : flour, sugar, egg, essences, and others. Then add the cooled butter, but still in a liquid state and as in my case some color as well. Mix them all with a spoon until it gets smooth and quite fluid, but not juicy. After this fill in the cupcakes shaped tray by adding in every place the special paper for muffins and fill in the forms until the half is full for it will rise in the oven and they will double their volume. The oven needs to be slightly warmed before putting in the tray and during the baking it needs to have medium temperature, about 180 degrees.
After 25 to 30 minutes, our beautiful baked muffins / cupcakes are ready. When the tray is taken off the oven leave it for about 4 to 5 minutes to cool down. After cooling it will be easily remove the cupcakes from the forms and then you can start decorating. In my case I got over this stage but before putting the tray into the oven, I added a few grains of cocoa in each form of, for it was matching with rum I used.